Listening to podcasts is quite a lonely hobby, if you think about it. Especially if you’re like me, and listen to podcasts on drives.
They’re probably the best way to pass time in traffic. 30-minute bumper-to-bumper drive to the city? No problem, that’s like an episode of a TV show, and we all know how fast time passes when you’re enjoying yourself.
However, I’ve come to realize that this only works when you’re driving alone. For those of you who have friends that enjoy the same podcasts as you, this might not be an issue. This is for the rest of us.
When you have passengers in the car, you have to account for the fact that they might want to talk. Not everyone is as interested in the origin of the A note as you are.
Once in a while you might put on something that appeals to everybody, but that would mean getting everyone to keep quiet and interested in the episode.
If people talk, it distracts you, and you’d have to relisten to catch everything (ugh, imagine relistening to a podcast episode with the limited amount of time you have).
Or worse, you might be listening to something interesting to your passengers, and they ask you to rewind it from the start. Come on, they’re not going to listen to the whole thing anyway!
Once they get out of your car, you’re stuck trying to find where you left off, good luck if there are no chapters on Spotify.
Or they might just talk amongst each other, and you have to decide if you want to participate in the conversation or ignore them, which is anti-social, especially since your car is now a social environment.
So if you’re like me, you save podcasts for when you’re driving solo. When you can actually focus. Listening to people talk to each other, while you sit alone in the car.
Maybe that’s the point. Podcasts are kind of a private experience. They only really work when you’re alone.
And so, to not be a weirdo; when you have passengers, put on some music and let them talk over it. Because it’s just the soundtrack for the drive.